“If you don’t listen to your instincts and learn to read them, you’ll never master your element. Find the water within you. Let it connect to the water without. Once you feel the tie between yourself and your environment…” He broke away from her, stepping to the side and lifting his arms as if in prayer. The lake rose in a sheer curtain of rippling, living water. Fish danced in it. Curious birds swooped by and shook their feathers. “…you will know your power, Makeda Abel.”

He let the water come crashing down and turned to Makeda, the spray billowing around him, drawn to his bare skin. “This world belongs to us. Water is the true cradle of life. The whole of this world is nothing but a stone-kissed sea, a playground for our kind.” A wide smile broke through the darkness. “No matter what the others might think, in our world, she who controls water can rule the earth.”

Makeda was still trying to figure out the trial protocols for Dr. McTierney two nights later. She wondered if she shared Kato’s assertion with the Irish physician whether he’d be more amenable to her requests.

Just so you know, Dr. McTierney, I’ve been told by a former emperor that I could possibly rule the earth, so you should probably just send me daily reports and not bitch about it.

That might not work as well as she hoped.

Makeda had spoken to Brenden McTierney on the satellite phone the previous night and was reasonably content with his competency. She also warned him she’d expect nightly updates once the trials were underway, even though the doctor balked at that amount of oversight. She was micromanaging, but he’d just have to live with it. She’d never run trials from a distance before. It was infuriating on several levels.

Lucien strode into the lab carrying a handful of papers. “I think I’ve figured something out.”

She glanced at him and quickly glanced away. The normally aloof vampire had kept up his steady and affectionate behavior, leaving Makeda wondering what had come over her former antagonist and when whatever switch he’d flipped would flip back. She wasn’t accustomed to Lucien’s affection, and in the absence of her normal support system, she didn’t want to become dependent on it. That couldn’t lead to anything good.

“What did you figure out?” Makeda asked, keeping her eyes trained on her calculations.

“I’ve figured out where the virus originates.”

“In the marrow,” she said. “We knew that.”

“I mean before that.”

She looked up. “What do you mean?”

“It’s a virus. It doesn’t spontaneously generate, it’s transmitted. Replicated. But it’s the only virus in history that seems to affect vampires,” he said. “Why?”

“I… don’t know. You’re the vampire-biology expert. I assumed you had—”

“Immunity.” Lucien pulled up a stool and sat on it, so close she could feel his amnis crackling with excitement. “And we do. We have centuries of it. Every antibody our sires and their sires ever had. But we have nothing to fight off this virus because it looks like nothing we’ve ever seen before.”

“Because it’s a mutation.”

“Of what?”

She opened her mouth, but she couldn’t think of anything. She’d looked at the virus’s structure but not that closely. She’d been more focused on how it was replicating, not its origins. “The Elixir causes it.”

“It causes the mutation,” Lucien said. “Unlocks it. But where did the virus originate?”

“There are no new viruses,” Makeda said. “There are variations of older viruses or those that have lain dormant or those we haven’t discovered yet.”

“But we did stumble across it, Makeda. My mother and her friends unlocked it hundreds of years ago.”

“And they eradicated it when Kato went mad,” she said. “You’ve told me this story before. It was rediscovered in the early part of this century by a vampire bent on world domination. Or destruction, depending on who you ask. And it’s been spreading since.”

“To every vampire it touches. Every human. No matter their genetics or geography.”

“So?” Makeda frowned. “Lucien, you have to know that we’re all genetically similar. Markers of race or ethnicity aren’t biological. They’re a construct. Even vampires and humans are basically the same.”

“Except for my mother.”

Makeda blinked. “Excuse me?”

“The virus has affected everyone it touches except my mother. I took a sample of her blood when I took Kato’s. Come look.” Lucien’s fangs had dropped in his excitement, and one clipped his lower lip.

The scent of blood distracted Makeda, but she managed to rein in her instincts. She walked over to Lucien’s workstation and looked at the printout he handed her. “What am I looking at?”

“A reading of Kato’s viral load.”

“It’s a lot lower than I expected,” she said. “If this were a cancer, I’d say he was in remission. I was talking to him the other night, and it sounds like—”

“Not important.” Lucien shoved another paper under her nose. “This is Saba’s.”

Makeda tried to make sense of what she was seeing. “She… Her blood—”

“Is nearly the same as Kato’s, which makes sense.” He scowled. “Because they’ve been exchanging blood.”